Source: Gulfnews.comRas Al Khaimah: Shaikh Mohammad Bin Saud Bin Saqr Al Qasimi, Crown Prince of Ras Al Khaimah, witnessed the release of 48 captive-bred houbara bustards at the Banyan Tree Al Wadi on Friday. Shaikh Mohammad released the first bird, which is fitted with a satellite transmitter, as part of the President His Highness Shaikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan Houbara Reintroduction Project in the UAE and Arabian Peninsula to restore a sustainable wild population of a bird synonymous with local culture and traditions in the UAE. The move also underscores the determination by His Highness Shaikh Saud Bin Saqr Al Qasimi, Supreme Council Member and Ruler of Ras Al Khaimah, to focus on environmental issues. The release of the bird was carried out by the Ras Al Khaimah Environmental Protection and Development Authority (EPDA-RAK) in collaboration with the International Fund for Houbara Conservation (IFHC). Dr Saif Mohammad Al Ghais, Executive Director of EPDA-RAK, said the omnivorous bird, which feeds on seeds, insects and other small creatures, is considered an icon of Arabia deserts and is widely prized as a quarry for falconers. The houbara bustard is found in south Asia, Arabia, Saudi Arabia, North Africa (Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Morocco) and parts of western Europe.

Source: Pakistantoday.com.pkLahore High Court (LHC) on Thursday sought replies from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Interior Ministry and Forest Department on a plea seeking safe migration of Siberian birds in Pakistan.

Advocate Kashif Sulemani moved the petition and submitted that every year in December millions of Siberian birds migrate to Pakistan due to the harsh cold climate, and return to their native land when the weather improves.

He submitted that during the stay of the birds in Pakistan, people hunt them in violation of international laws. He requested the court to ensure a safe stay and exit for the Siberian birds.

Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah heard the initial arguments of the lawyer and sought replies from the respondents by December 20.

The famous route from Siberia to various destinations in Pakistan over Karakorum, Hindu Kush and Suleiman ranges along the Indus River down to the delta is known as the International Migratory Bird Route Number 4or the Indus Flyway.

The birds start on this route in November. February is the peak time and by March they start flying back home. There are a total of seven identified flyways in the world.

A large number of birds of diverse species, including water fowls, cranes, teals, pintail, mallard and gadwall, take this route. Some extinguishing species like white-headed duck, houbara bustard and Siberian crane also travel on this route.

Wildlife experts have stated the numbers of seasonal birds transmigrating to Punjab had decreased by at least 70 per cent over the past few years. They warn that excessive tree cutting, pollution and major construction projects make the bird sanctuaries unsuitable.

Last year, National Assembly Standing Committee on Climate Change was told that bustards and Siberian cranes were being hunted indiscriminately. Both species of the migratory birds are listed in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.

Officials from the Ministry of Climate Change had explained that members of royal families from the Middle East, particularly those in Saudi Arabia, were given licenses to hunt endangered migratory birds, such as bustards, despite restrictions in place.

Source: Arrestblog.wordpress.comFrom October 29-31, 2013, the Environment Public Authority (EPA) of Kuwait organized a Workshop titled Strengthening Regional Cooperation to Combat Wildlife Crime in West Asia. The event invited key officers and representatives from countries in West Asia, namely Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, as well as representatives from international organizations such as the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) Secretariat, and the World Customs Organisation (WCO). The workshop also invited wildlife enforcement networks including long time partner of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) funded Asia’s Regional Response to Endangered Species Trafficking (ARREST) program, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Wildlife Enforcement Network (ASEAN-WEN) and the recently established Horn of Africa Wildlife Enforcement Network (HA-WEN.) The Workshop highlighted the promotion and development of a regional network as part of an action plan to continue enhancing collaboration and exchanges of information by countries in West Asia, particularly in the area of wildlife law enforcement as one of the region’s identified priorities in improving regional cooperation. In developing concrete next steps and recommendations to strengthen regional cooperation through a regional wildlife law enforcement network, the workshop considered the national perspectives presented by the country delegates, initiatives and tools existing with the CITES Secretariat and the WCO and experiences from ASEAN-WEN and HA-WEN. The International Consortium in Combating Wildlife Crime (ICCWC) and the US Department of State provided support in having ASEAN-WEN and HA-WEN participate in the Workshop, to create more opportunities to increase cooperation and awareness among the regional networks. ASEAN-WEN shared experiences in ASEAN and ASEAN-WEN’s establishment as a regional initiative in Southeast Asia on wildlife law enforcement networking. The workshop culminated in the presentation of the Feasibility Study on Opportunities for Regional Enforcement Cooperation in West Asia, which highlighted the different opportunities available, current challenges and gaps, recommendations, and most importantly, a proposal to establish a West Asia Wildlife Enforcement Network (WA-WEN).

Source: CITIES.orgPress ReleaseCountries of West Asia have agreed on a process aimed at strengthening regional cooperation to combat wildlife crime. The agreement was reached at a workshop hosted by Kuwait, from 29 to 31 October 2013, with the participation of officials from eight countries of West Asia: Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The workshop was organized at the request of the CITES Member States (Parties) of West Asia, in order to consult with regional government officials involved in CITES implementation and law enforcement, including police and Customs, as well as the national CITES Management Authorities and relevant experts. The aim was to consider the need for, and feasibility of, establishing a regional network to coordinate the enforcement of laws that regulate trade in wildlife and to share intelligence. It was organized jointly by the Environment Public Authority of Kuwait, the CITES Secretariat and the West Asia Regional Office of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP-ROWA), with the financial support of the European Commission.Participants also included representatives of the CITES Secretariat, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the World Customs Organization (WCO), the ICPO-INTERPOL office in Kuwait, and the secretariats of two existing regional networks to combat wildlife crime – one for the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), and the other for the Horn of Africa. All shared their experience and showed how they could support a regional effort for West Asia. The CITES Parties at the workshop agreed on the need for a regional network in West Asia to enhance regional cooperation in the field of law enforcement related to wildlife crime and to facilitate regional exchange of information, data and intelligence. They elected a task force, comprising four countries, to prepare a proposal on the mechanism to establish a regional network to combat wildlife crime in West Asia, for consideration by each government, in order to obtain the necessary high level of commitment. In warmly welcoming the outcomes of the workshop, the Secretary-General of CITES, Mr John E. Scanlon, said, “the CITES Secretariat will continue to offer its full support to initiatives led by CITES Parties to develop regional networks to enhance wildlife law enforcement, to ensure that wildlife trade is legal and sustainable.” The State of Kuwait being a representative of the Asian region in the Standing Committee of CITES, and coordinator of the Convention in the framework of the League of Arab States, has offered to host the new network under the auspices of the Environment Public Authority.

With wild elephants being driven towards extinction by the scourge of poaching, Möevenpick Hotels are feeding, and possibly creating, the demand for ivory by renting shops inside their hotels to ivory traders, and thus profiting from the ivory trade.

Promotion for this shop involves leaving booklets in each hotel room promoting the shop.

Our reader took a video of this shop inside the Möevenpick Hotel in Madinah in Saudi Arabia in October 2013 (see below).By promoting ivory sales and creating demand for ivory products, Möevenpick hotels are encouraging the poaching of elephants. By displaying ivory openly for sale in their hotels, they are marketing ivory to people who may not have previously thought of buying any. This has a terrible human cost, as well as threatening the existence of elephants. As many as13,000 people have lost their lives protecting wildlife in the last eight years around the world, and it is estimated that up to 50,000 elephants are killed by poachers every year. 6 tonnes of ivory have been seized by authorities in East Africa in the last few weeks, and seizures only represent a small percentage of the ivory that is exported every year.Sustainability policy or lip service?Möevenpick Hotels own sustainability policy states "For Mövenpick Hotels & Resorts sustainability is about meeting current needs while at the same time preserving and contributing to the future for generations to come.Mövenpick Hotels & Resorts is convinced that the combination of its values and global approach to sustainability will help the company to be recognized as one of the world's most trusted hotel management companies."Like many large organisations, it appears that Moevenpick pay lip service to ‘sustainability' whilst the reality is that if someone wants to pay them some rent for a shop, then the need for cash overcomes "preserving and contributing to the future for generations to come." If elephants are to survive demand for ivory needs to be stopped. Video.

In a rare show of candour, Natural Resources and Tourism Minister Khamis Kagasheki pinpointed Arusha regional crime officer as belonging to a sophisticated network of rich wildlife poachers.

Though the minister didn’t specifically identify the RCO by his name, he was quite categorical talking about a public servant with the rank of RCO in Arusha. When contacted for comment, the current RCO for Arusha, Mr. Buan Nyanda, said he wasn’t aware of the accusations, which he termed “false.”

“The minister has never told me about this … in any case, I was not in Arusha at the time … I was in Dar es Salaam,” he said.

The minister told a news conference in Dar es Salaam yesterday that in the ongoing operation which started last March, two Saudi nationals had since been arrested, both of them subsequently handed over to the RCO – who allegedly granted the suspects bail and handed back their travel comments.

Under the law, suspected poachers cannot get bail, nor can they travel – particularly if they happen to be foreigners.

Keeping the “name” deliberately under wraps, the minister was categorical that the RCO for Arusha region “helped” the two suspects gain their release from custody -- on bail. More....

Bahraini authorities have pledged a crackdown on the illegal import of endangered animals such as white tigers, African cheetahs and lion cubs. They promised to shut down pet stores, zoos and farms that trade in exotic animals that are brought into the country through 'official channels'. It is claimed some of the creatures are even sedated and driven from neighbouring countries through the King Fahad Causeway. The GDN visited facilities where crocodiles, baboons, hyenas, oryx and deer were kept in poor conditions - some without water. Our reporter also negotiated the import of an endangered white tiger cub for $1,200. However, Supreme Council for Environment acting director Abdulqader Khamis said his team is drawing up tougher legislation to combat the growing problem. He told the GDN he will also ensure Customs only let animals into the country that had first been authorised by the council. "We are now in the process of developing a national legislation and we are working with government ministries, NGOs and other parties," he said. "We have already started to strengthen the existing legislation and we hope to introduce new laws as soon as possible. More....

Saudis have called for stringent action against poachers following the circulation on the social media of a picture showing three dead gazelles being transported in a vehicle.

The gazelles are believed to have been killed in the Bani Maaridh reserve in Najran in southwestern Saudi Arabia near the border with Yemen, local news site Sabq reported on Monday. “This is totally irresponsible,” a blogger writing under the moniker “Jundi”, said. “The government has been spending millions of riyals to protect and nurture these gazelles and other animals in natural reserves. Yet there are people who do not seem to care. They should be punished severely,” Jundi said. Riyadh01, a blogger, said that the poacher should be punished for his act.

“We have lost so many animals in Arabia because of the poaching,” he said. “The man who killed the gazelles obviously did not need their meat, but rather wanted to show off and posted the picture in social networks. He should be severely punished and his vehicle confiscated.” Khalid said that a stricter surveillance of the natural reserves was needed. “We should have 24-hour patrols to ensure there is no trespassing,” he said. “At the same time, those who are caught poaching in the reserves should be severely punished. There should be a zero tolerance policy.” More....

The dealer and prospective buyer were casually introduced to one another, and two small cheetah cubs were brought into the room. Visibly underweight and with dirty yellow fur, they limped and meowed meekly.

The animals were weak and slow, and their skin hung loosely from their bones. Two other cubs had perished and their emaciated carcasses lay nearby. Ali, a dealer of rare animals in Beit al-Faqih, a city in western Yemen, claimed to have had eight cheetah cubs in his possession. Four had recently been sold to a Saudi family, he said on the condition of anonymity. It had only taken an hour in the city's Friday animal market to find him. Posing as buyers for a European zoo, nobody questioned why two tall, white foreigners were looking to buy African animals in Yemen. None of the livestock traders who descend on the city each week seemed surprised when asked if they had lions, leopards, or cheetahs for sale. Yemeni traders know that foreigners wandering though their souk are not simply looking for camels or cheap Ethiopian sheep. The city has become a hub for the lucrative trade in wild animals, smuggled across the Red Sea between Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. Visitors from the Gulf states looking for exotic animals for private collections and pets have become a common sight in western Yemen. While the exact numbers are unavailable, the trend seems to have put a dent in the cheetah population across Somalia, whose autonomous Somaliland region - located across the Gulf of Aden from Yemen - is used as a staging ground for the smuggling. In an ironic twist, Yemen, the poorest country in the Arab world, is now allegedly one of the world's most lucrative conduits for wildlife crime.Research compiled by the Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF) suggests that many cubs taken from the wild in Africa die before reaching their final destination in the Arabian Peninsula. More....

Poachers have sought to mock the Saudi Wildlife Authority (SWA) by painting slogans deriding the authority with the blood of illegally slain deer, rabbits, ibex and other rare animals on their vehicles.

One such slogan proclaimed the killings were to be done out of “love for the SWA,” according to Al-Jazirah newspaper.

The poachers took multiple pictures of their vehicles with the slaughtered animals lying across their hoods and posted them on social media networks, sparking a debate on the effectiveness of SWA patrols in stopping these illegal acts.

The SWA uses advanced equipment to document the whereabouts of endangered species and has in the past strongly condemned these criminal acts. It has released a list of animals that cannot be hunted. Poaching is an environmentally irresponsible, illegal and un-Islamic act, it said.

All are equal under the law, or at least should be in every country in the world, but exceptions are clearly made for the rich, or rather the very rich. Algeria for example has always been very strict in the field of animal protection. If you are an Algerian citizen and you are caught poaching with some old shotgun, you could end up in prison for several years. But if you are a Saudi sheikh and you love to try the ancient art of falconry, then everything changes. This is in fact happening in Dhayet Bellegwmiri, 20 kilometres from Hassi-Delaa, where a vast camp has been set up in a very short time. The well-equipped camp is occupied by a group of noble Saudis who love hunting with their falcons. Their favourite pray animals are bustards (large migratory birds that come to North Africa from Europe to winter) and gazelles. Their equipment gives them quite an edge over their possible victims: off-road vehicles able to drive fast on the sandy terrain; GPS, telescopes and more cutting-edge technology. They also use sophisticated communication systems and field kitchens, a far cry from the way common people in Algeria hunt. According to newspaper La Liberte', which has denounced the situation quoting its own sources, nearly all assistants of the Saudi princes are Yemenite nationals, while the Saudis have hired locals who know the hunting grounds well to guide them to their pray. But the nationality of the dozens of armed men who protect the Saudi princes is unclear. Algerian animal protection activists have underlined that hunting the targeted species is absolutely forbidden in the area, as well as hunting other species on the endangered list. But local residents have pointed out that the mad hunt on bustards has a very ''human'' motive. The meet of this large wader, particularly its heart and liver, are thought to be highly aphrodisiac, as much as the famous coloured pills. But the hunted animals, like the bustard and many gazelle species living in Algeria, are protected by Algerian legislation. But pecunia non olet ("money does not stink'') and apparently it is easy to turn a blind eye to an activity that is still poaching, but one that brings in a lot of money.

Highly emotional and completely guileless, elephants mourn their dead—and across Africa, they are grieving daily as demand from China’s “suddenly wealthy” has driven the price of ivory to $700 a pound or more. With tens of thousands of elephants being slaughtered each year for their tusks, raising the specter of an “extinction vortex,” Alex Shoumatoff travels from Kenya to Seattle to Guangzhou, China, to expose those who are guilty in the massacre—and recognize those who are determined to stop it.

Another carcass has been found. On the Kuku Group Ranch, one of the sectors allotted to the once nomadic Maasai that surround Amboseli National Park, in southern Kenya. Amboseli is home to some 1,200 elephants who regularly wander into the group ranches, these being part of their original, natural habitat. More than 7,000 Maasai live in scattered fenced-in compounds called bomas with their extended families and their cattle on Kuku’s 280,000 acres. Traditionally, the Maasai coexisted with their wildlife. They rarely killed elephants, because they revered them and regarded them as almost human, as having souls like us. Neighboring tribespeople believe that elephants were once people who were turned into animals because of their vanity and given beautiful, flashy white tusks, which condemned them, in the strangely truthful logic of myth, to be forever hunted and killed in the name of human vanity. And Maasai believe when a young woman is getting married and her groom comes to get her from her village she musn’t look back or she will become an elephant. “But in the last few years, everything has changed,” a member of the tribe told me. “The need for money has changed the hearts of the Maasai.”

In 2008, post-election ethnic violence followed by the global recession halved tourism to Kenya, making the wildlife in the parks even harder to protect. Then, in 2009, one of the worst droughts in living memory hit much of the country. More than 400 elephants in Amboseli died. The Maasai lost many of their cows and are still struggling, while the price of ivory is higher than ever, so increasing numbers of them are risking the misfortune that killing an elephant could bring on their families, according to their traditional thinking, and are getting into poaching. There are brokers just across the Tanzania border who are paying cash—around $20 a pound—for raw ivory and selling it to the Chinese. Or perhaps there is a series of transactions, a series of middlemen, but ultimately what is not being picked up by the Kenya Wildlife Service’s sniffing dogs at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, in Nairobi, is making its way by all kinds of circuitous routes to China, where raw ivory is now fetching $700 or more a pound. Ninety percent of the passengers who are being arrested for possession of ivory at Jomo Kenyatta are Chinese nationals, and half the poaching in Kenya is happening within 20 miles of one of the five massive Chinese road-building projects in various stages of completion. More....

Lions and tigers and bears. Snakes on a plane. A barrel full of monkeys. Newspaper headlines for the recent spate of smuggling cases involving exotic and endangered animals nearly write themselves.

While the headlines may be amusing, the facts of the illicit trade in wild animals are from a laughing matter. Most people will have fumed in anger at the Emirati man who is alleged to have tried to leave Bangkok with a suitcase stuffed with four leopard cubs, a Malayan sun bear and a red-cheek marmoset, all endangered species. And they will no doubt have felt a sense of impotent indignation at the news on Tuesday that he got on a plane and fled the country, thereby escaping justice.The heart-wrenching story of the two young lions recently rescued in Abu Dhabi will have induced even deeper outrage. The ends of their paws had been amputated to remove their claws and their canine teeth had been filed down until the roots were exposed. The cruelty shown by their owners is contemptible. Sadly, it is not unique.On Sunday, a cheetah was spotted limping through the streets of Karama in the capital. Malnourished, the eight-month-old animal broke its chain presumably out of hunger and leapt from a rooftop, breaking a foreleg.Reports have trickled in over the years showing a slow, but steady trade in exotic species, often endangered, often imported in violation of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) and UAE law. The National has reported on tiger cubs being sold openly in the markets of the Emirates. More....

Source: Greenprophet.comBy Tafline LaylinIn 2007, Karl Ammann appeared on Time Magazine’s Heroes of the Environment List, and for good reason. Since discovering 2,004 smoked primates and 1,000 fresh carcasses on board Zaire river boats in1988, he has devoted his life to exposing both the bushmeat and illegal wildlife trafficking. His photography and writings have appeared in several outlets including the New York Times Magazine, Newsweek, Stern Magazine, and the National Geographic Almanac, and he has recently co-authored two books namely Conserving Nature with Tony Rose and others, and Eating Apes with Dale Peterson. For his work, he has received a slew of accolades. We met him this past weekend in Nairobi, Kenya, where we discussed private reserves throughout the Middle East that show off illegal wildlife without any retribution from the authorities. Even CITES, the international organization tasked with regulating wildlife trafficking, has been notoriously lackadaisical about bringing offenders to task.Karl, you first became interested in bushmeat trade before switching your focus to wildlife trafficking. Can you talk about this? “I’ve kind of moved away from Bushmeat. It’s a mess in Central Africa with no answers in sight. What’s the point of banging your head against the wall. You’ve done everything you can to expose the situation – policymakers, NGOs, and everyone else can no longer say they didn’t know what’s going on.”So what you are you working on at the moment? “Right now I’m making a film about the reptile skin trade – about over-exploitation, CITES export licensing for the Guccis of the world – all essentially illegal.”Where do you market your films? “It’s definitely not a moneymaker but I seem to have good luck in South Africa, Scandinavia and Germany. The American market is very difficult because they want happy endings, and my stories don’t have happy endings.”Africa Geographic did a piece on wildlife trafficking in the Middle East – can we focus on that for a bit? “I didn’t really do any work there. I mean, I went to Dubai and visited the zoo director there, asked him about his chimps and where they came from and went to Qatar and asked where those chimps came from. It’s a mess – Kuwait, the whole region. One journalist with Gulf News has been good about picking up stories and running with them, to some extent, but the expat community doesn’t want to confront the issue. They’re afraid to even send emails. If they’re afraid to send emails, that’s a pretty good indication that it’s not safe. People who have helped me have been harassed, they’ve been threatened, and it’s still going on.” More....

A 2-year-old lion, emaciated and barely breathing, is found in a tiny cage off a Beirut highway. Monkeys are hauled through the dark tunnels of Gaza, bound for private zoos. Rare prize falcons are kept in desert encampments by wealthy Arab sheiks.

The trade in endangered animals is flourishing in the Middle East, fueled by corruption, ineffective legislation and lax law enforcement. "It's a problem in the Arab world that we can no longer ignore," said Marguerite Shaarawi, co-founder of the animal rights group Animals Lebanon. The group is pushing for Lebanon to join the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, whose signatories are meeting this month in Qatar. It is the first time the 175-nation convention is meeting in an Arab country. Lebanon and Bahrain are the only Arab countries yet to sign the convention. Delegates at the U.N. conference are considering nearly four dozen proposals on a range of endangered species from rhinos to polar bears. John Sellar, chief enforcement officer for CITES, said it is difficult to estimate the extent of the illegal trade in the Arab world, but Animals Lebanon estimates that it is the third largest illegal trade in the region, after weapons and drugs."Much of the illegal trade that takes place here is of a specialized nature," Sellar said, citing the example of prize falcons, kept by many Arab sheiks in desert encampments, particularly in the United Arab Emirates. More....

A fingernail moon hung over the table-flat desert as Salah al-Mahdhoury, my biologist guide, and I are served dates and fresh fruit by Shaykh Muhammad bin Thamna al-Harsusi, one of the leaders of the Harasis tribe of central Oman. We rest on cushions and talk into the night over spiced tea and unsweetened coffee about the Arabian oryx, the long-horned white antelope that is symbolic to many Omanis. “This is the original place for the oryx,” the shaykh tells us. Members of his family and others join amiably in the conversation. “Oryx think like human beings in organizing themselves. The leaders take shifts at the head of the herd.” It feels like a recounting of knowledge accumulated over generations. “The Harasis are caretakers. This is the meaning of the word,” the shaykh continues. “But despite all the promises, we cannot see the future, because the future is not in our hands.”Since 1972, when the last wild oryx was shot in Oman, the sultanate has taken a leading role in regional attempts to save the species from extinction. The focus of its efforts has been largely here on this stony, semi-arid plain of karst limestone covering much of central Oman, known as the Jiddat al-Harasis. Here, beginning in 1979, oryx were bred and released into the Arabian Oryx Sanctuary, a vast unfenced area the size of Massachusetts or Belgium. By 1996, two years after being named a World Heritage Site by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the sanctuary was home to more than 450 free-roaming oryx, and the project’s success was acclaimed worldwide: The oryx, it seemed, was safe.Yet as Mohammed Shobrak points out, “most of the countries starting out on rein-troductions have the big picture—it’s all about conservation, bringing animals back to the wild—but they don’t have a detailed plan. So you start to see problems developing after a few years.” Shobrak is a biologist at Taif University and a consultant to Saudi Arabia’s National Commission for Wildlife Conservation and Development (NCWCD), which coordinates the kingdom’s oryx conservation. More....

Yesterday, twenty Arabian oryx – a kind of white antelope, native to the Middle East – were released into the wild at Wadi Rum in Jordan, as the latest step in efforts to reintroduce the animal to the wild after its near-extinction in the 1970s.

A bit of background: oryx once roamed widely from Egypt to Syria to Oman. They were a prize target for hunters, who celebrated the chase in epic poems: oryx became symbols of grace and fortitude, mythologized like bulls in Spanish culture or stags in British culture. The arrival of 4WD vehicles and automatic weapons in the 1940s meant that hunters could finally outpace the oryx – and in twenty years, they massacred virtually the whole population. A few breeding pairs were saved and flown to Phoenix, Arizona, to form the nucleus of a ‘World Herd’, from which all surviving oryx are now descended. Since then various countries have brought in reintroduction programmes, but almost none meets international guidelines. Oman could not control poaching at its huge reserve on the Jiddat al-Harasis plain, reduced the boundaries and was struck off UNESCO’s World Heritage Site list. Dubai has a desert reserve, centred on the Al-Maha luxury hotel. Abu Dhabi has crammed hundreds of oryx (along with giraffe and heaven knows what else) onto the small Sir Bani Yas island and called it a wildlife park with – predictably – a luxury hotel. They’re repeating the theme at a desert reserve in the south, due to open later this year with another luxury hotel, Qasr al-Sarab. Jordan’s habitats have been destroyed by overgrazing of sheep and goats; its oryx have remained penned in a small reserve at Shaumari for the last 30 years. Only in Saudi Arabia, where there is much less pressure for tourism development, has oryx reintroduction worked, at the immense Uruq Bani Maarid reserve in the Empty Quarter. More....